Income gap leaves city Asians far behind suburban cousins

For Mubeena Khan, the United States appeared to offer the life that many independent-minded women from India dream of, especially those with college degrees: a career that supports a middle-class lifestyle, less gender bias than back home and freedom to practice a strict form of their religion.

Nearly four years after arriving in Chicago, however, Khan is less certain than ever that this dream will be fulfilled. Khan and her family, including her husband and three young children, are among a surprisingly large percentage of Chicago's ethnic Asians who live beneath the poverty line.

"I am following my culture and trying to do what I can for my children to lead a good life, but I am struggling," said Khan. "We are living hand to mouth now, and we need to do more for our kids."

Long recognized as one of the most prosperous minority groups, Asian-Americans nationwide enjoy overall incomes and educational rates higher than whites as well as most other minority groups. That holds true in Chicago's suburbs, as well, but the story is very different in the city, where many ethnic Asians are mired in poverty deeper than most other minorities, including African-Americans and Latinos.

An analysis of recently released data from the 2000 census reveals an intricate portrait of the region's Asian community, one that in some ways defies stereotypes. The analysis shows that a wide economic gulf exists between many city-dwelling Asian ethnic groups and their suburban counterparts--a gulf larger than is found inside any other racial group.

The disparity in median household incomes between city and suburban residents of Asian descent was vast--almost $30,000 per household. The median income for Chicago's Asians in 1999 was $40,519; for suburbanites, it was an extremely healthy $70,686.

Perhaps the biggest barrier to economic vitality is not speaking English, the data revealed. Ethnic Asian groups with a large percentage of members not fluent in English (Koreans, Vietnamese, Chinese) had higher poverty rates and lower incomes than ethnic groups with high percentages of English speakers (Indians, Filipinos). Indeed, nearly one-third of Koreans in the city were living in poverty, a rate higher than that for blacks or Latinos.

The Census Bureau's racial category "Asian" encompasses a wide variety of ethnic groups, from Indians and Pakistanis to Cambodians and Vietnamese--diverse populations that arrive here with varying levels of education, job skills and capital. The differences often lead to greatly different positions of wealth.

Demographers, educators and social scientists have taken a keen interest in the evolving Asian community because its rapidly growing size has implications for schools, social service agencies and the region's economy. About one-third of the nearly 375,000 Asians in the region live in the city, where in 2000 they composed just 4.3 percent of the population.

Still, the Asian population in the city grew 26 percent in the 1990s, a rate outpaced only by Hispanics.

While these groups are scattered widely in the Chicago suburbs, mostly to the north and northwest of the city, specific ethnic enclaves have developed in the city. People of Indian ancestry have settled along Devon Avenue on the North Side, while Vietnamese staked out a corridor along Argyle Street and Chinese have congregated in Chinatown.

Koreans are older

Among the various Asian ethnic groups, the city's Korean population fared the worst economically during the 1990s, the data showed.

More than 30 percent of the city's Korean-Americans lived below the poverty line. When the census was conducted, the federally defined poverty line stood at $17,029 for a family of four. While Asian-Americans in the suburbs measured a poverty rate of 4 percent, in Chicago it was 18 percent.

But those statistics don't tell the whole story.

The peak period of Korean immigration to the U.S. came during the second half of the 1980s when more than 34,000 arrived each year. Many of those Koreans were students or young families, and they eventually coaxed their parents to move here, as well.

Those older Koreans, whose incomes are low because they are retired, tend to live in the city, where they have better access to subsidized housing and public transportation. In fact, nearly 17 percent of the city's Korean population is more than 65 years old, compared with about 4 percent in the suburbs.

Nevertheless, the language barrier is perhaps the most significant reason for the high poverty rate of Koreans in the city, experts said.

Census data showed that 47 percent of Korean households in the city are "linguistically isolated," defined as household inhabitants at least 14 years old who possess poor English skills.

That is particularly true of the elderly immigrants from Korea. On a recent weekday at the Center for Seniors, 5230 N. Kedzie Ave., not one of the roughly 85 seniors who came to exercise and mingle with other Koreans could speak English.